Thursday, August 30, 2007

The New Point and Shoot In My Pocket

In Autumn 2002 I purchased my first digital camera - A Canon PowerShot S200 Digital Elph. (Elph?) I bought it before a trip to New York City to hear the premier of The Transmigration of Souls by John Adams.

I've carried it in my pocket constantly ever since and taken twenty thousand pictures - more or less. Here it is, still working fine, looking a little like a flat fish with both eyes on one side of its head. It's a total antique now with a mere 2 megapixel resolution, but the vast majority of my original pictures on this blog were taken with this camera. It's somewhat the worse for wear. Notice the duct tape holding the memory card slot closed.

Next is a self portrait I took with the old Elph several days ago. In the mirror panes you can see an auto body shop, some trees, the San Gabriel Mountains and white clouds behind them. Click any picture to enlarge it.

We're having a heat wave. Not Iraq hot. Not even Barstow hot. But plenty hot. The sunlight is intense and painfully bright. Southern California is a beautiful place in such light. I see possible photographs everywhere.

The third picture is my new Point and Shoot (photographed with the old one of course). It's another Canon, the PowerShot TX1. But it's not an Elph, whatever that means. It was a birthday gift from an anonymous admirer who somehow knew just what I wanted. Thanks Leslie.

The new one is virtually the same size as the old one with the same basic features. But 5 year newer technology means higher resolution and better video capability. The lens protrudes from the body in a unique way. This gives the camera a 10X optical enlargement instead of a piddling 3X. There are lots of things I want to do with that extra zoom when I take it out of my pocket.

On the LCD screen above you can see the fourth picture, another self portrait. I call it "Man wondering if it's working." This was the second picture I took with the new camera.

2 comments
:

Nice choice on the TX1! I bought one for my fiancee just last week, and she uses it to make short, weird videos. (The video features on that thing are great.) For us, that means now we'll have moving pictures of our cat, not just stills. It's an exciting development.

At that tiny size, people don't realize it's a video camera, so people tend to be more natural. At least that was our experience at the Santa Monica cat show over the weekend.

Thanks John - Yes, I've noticed in the reviews of the TX1 that the video features get high praise. But that scares me. I'm afraid of what might happen if I start doing video. I don't need yet another chronivorous activity to add to what I'm already doing. (Lots of pictures was not what I expected this blog to be about at the beginning. Pictures just sort of happened.)

I remember when it was "all about cats" around here - but now we've got a dog as well. A big red dog who chases balls and sticks his nose in unexpected places. So now it's all about cats and dog.

Oh - and men who have a "fiancee" deserve to be told "Congratulations!". Please consider yourself told.